Disenchantment 2

“Stop it!” she yelled, “I want to listen to Christmas songs!” Perry was visibly upset by the fact that I had tried to find a different radio station.

“What’s wrong with rock, baby? You like it too.” Yeah, I had been drinking and by accounts of other people, that didn’t always put me in the most agreeable of moods. I’m not a mean drunk, behaving usually happy and silly, but just not the nicest guy at times

“Take a break from your AC/DC persona for a bit. You don’t need to always be metal!” Perry then turned the radio station back to the channel that had, at least during the season on a temporary basis, been a Christmas station. “Silent Night,” began droning into my ears.

“Technically, AC/DC isn’t really metal.”

“It’s your rule, Oren: the driver picks the music. I’m driving.”

“Hey, I have Bad Religion’s Christmas album.”

“No!”

Her mood was shifting from playfully negative to pissy, so I opted not to continue with the music thing. “Okay, baby.” I already felt a piss coming on, even though I had gone before we left her parents’ place.

We rode in silence for a while. I felt myself getting weary, having gone some time without any more alcohol being put into my system. If I hadn’t needed to urinate, I might have drifted off to sleep. “Silent Night” gave way to “Frosty the Snowman,” which in turn led to “Little Drummer Boy.”

I kind of dig “Little Drummer Boy,” and I began singing along for a bit. At first, I attempted to match the tone of the song, as I’m a singer for work, and I have to admit that I’m pretty good. Perry seemed to like it at first, and even smiled. However, being a bit drunk, and silly, and maybe selfish, I started to sing the song the way Lemmy Kilmeister from Motorhead might, in a deep, dark, gravelly voice I shouted into the car, “Pa rum pa pum pum! Me and my fucking drum!”

“Cut it out, Oren! What’s wrong with you? Can’t you just stop? Ever?” Any progress that she had made in the lapse of conversation, toward being less angry with me, it seemed I had destroyed that.

“Sorry, baby.”

“Fuck you, your sorry.”

“I am Perry, seriously, very sorry. I won’t say anymore the whole ride home. You can listen to your X-mas tunes in peace. I just want to ask one thing, please...” I realized that I was not going to make it home without relieving my bladder.

“Ask what?”

“I need to pee, baby. Can you pull over?”

“No,” she said, and then made a very elaborate show of rolling her eyes, that someone outside the car, in the dark of night, might have noticed. “We’re almost home.”

“Baby, we still have probably about thirty minutes before we get home.”

“It’s much closer to fifteen minutes, Oren.”

“I think it’s over twenty, baby. Come on.”

“You only call me ‘baby’ when you’re drunk and want something.” She seemed to be softening up a bit though.

“I’m sorry, Perry. I love you, baby. Please...please, please, please.”

“You’re seriously like a child. You should have gone before we left. You can wait fifteen, even twenty minutes.”

“I did go before we left, right before we left. Alcohol is a diuretic, it makes you pee. Also, I drink beer, shoving lots of water into my body with the alcohol. I really need to piss now, or I’ll piss my pants. It’s your car.” I wasn’t lying. I had had to go, since shortly after we left, and each minute that dragged on made my bladder more and more uncomfortable. It was going beyond uncomfortable to almost painful.

“Fine, I’ll pull over when we hit Soledad Canyon Road. There’ll be a McDonald’s or a gas station or something. Isn’t there a Carl’s Junior there?”

“I can’t make it, baby. Just pull over up here.”

“No, no. Too many lights.”

“Okay, as soon as we get on Sierra Highway.” I remembered that there was an undeveloped stretch of road there, maybe a couple miles of weeds and dirt and not much else around.

“Be nice to me and I will,” she said as she increased the volume of the holiday tunes.

“Fine, fine. Maybe pick up the speed a bit?” My bladder was about to rebel. I felt it coming. It didn’t seem to care if we made it to Soledad or not.

“I’m not going to get a ticket because you have to pee. It will only be a minute or two before we get there.”

“Damn! Fine, okay.” I had to reach into the front pocket of my pants, grab my penis, and pinch the urethra to prevent a premature urination. I did it just in time. I felt the bladder release, now it was only the fact that I had manually closed my urethra that was preventing a large amount of urine from getting all over myself and my wife’s car.

“I don’t really like the way that you talked to my dad tonight. You drink too much and you’re not as happy and carefree as you used to be when drunk.”

“Yeah, uh, let’s talk about this later.” The pain was increasing and I had to put a firmer grip on my dick. It hurt, actually hurt—real pain.

“Why do you drink so much?” she asked.

I was trying not to lose my shit. Normally I’m in a very good mood when drinking, which is why I’ve been allowed to continue doing it well into my forties. Mean drunks have to quit young, or really mess up their lives. Nice drunks are allowed to drink themselves to death, often before anyone notices or cares. “Baby, I’m physically preventing piss from coming out by holding my dick. It hurts. Can you please just pull over?”

“Our turn’s right up here.” It was.

Time seemed to slow down as she crept along the road, glancing at the odometer, she wasn’t moving at a snail’s pace, but it really felt that way in my discomfort.

A few minutes after she turned onto Sierra Highway we got to the desolate area, after going under the Sate 14 freeway and Interstate 5. I realized there was a solitary streetlight out there, illuminating a small section of the darkness. I knew the answer before I asked: “Okay, we turned onto the street, can you pull over?”

“No, I will when we get out of the light.”

“Of course.”

We drove on for what seemed like minutes, but was probably no more than thirty seconds. “There’s no shoulder here, I need to go a little farther.” It looked like she almost smiled, enjoying this as some sort of payback for slights against her, whether real or just perceived slights.

“For fuck’s sake! Pull over!”

Santa Clarita was deemed the safest city in the United States. It is in the northern part of Los Angeles county and only recently actually hit a population to call it a city. It is made up of areas that were once smaller towns including Canyon Country, Saugus, Newhall, and Valencia. In a very incorporated area with skyrocketing real estate prices, it is sometimes odd to see areas that are so desolate. It was a relatively small area and you can see lights in the distance, and with the knowledge that travelling a mile or so in any direction, you will come upon homes or business and the rest of the civilized world, it’s not that wild, but it does sometimes make you feel like you entered a different world, and it could make you wonder why real estate developers were not able to claim this tiny section of the desert to rape and turn into more million dollar homes.

“There’s a shoulder coming up,” she said flatly.

Agonizing seconds ticked by. I then remembered thinking about something. Toxic shock syndrome? That wasn’t it. That was from a staph infection. There was something that could kill you if you held your urine too long. I was literally holding it against the will of my body. Trying to keep my mind off of my bladder, I thought about checking on my phone, but I was drunk and wouldn’t have even been able to because I would have needed to use my right hand to get into my right front pocket and that was the hand I was using to clamp down on my urethra.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry, please.” I began to shake my legs wildly, the pain was no joke at that point.

“Okay, fine.” She started to slow down and pull over, finally making it onto the shoulder of the road.

“Okay, okay, okay, stop, stop.”

The car continued to creep along the dirt on the side of the road. I was looking out the window, although due to the darkness and the minimal dashboard lights coming from inside the vehicle, it was difficult to see anything. After a few seconds I realized that we should have stopped, but we were still moving. I looked back at her.

She smiled. She was deliberately continuing to drive slowly to see how long I would wait. “Not fucking funny! Stop! I will jump out.”

“Okay,” she said and actually started to laugh as the car came to a complete stop. Maybe I deserved that for my earlier behavior.

I immediately opened the car door and attempted to fling myself out. I felt a tug around my chest and waist resulting in a sharp push on my bladder as I lost my grip on my penis. Urine started coming out, and I felt my inner thigh getting warmer in contrast to the blasting air conditioner inside the car. I immediately clamped down again on my dick. “Damnit!” I had forgotten to take my seat belt off. I quickly unlatched it and practically jumped out of the vehicle.

I felt slightly better because a little of the urine had been released, but mentally felt worse because I was partially soaked in my own urine. My eyes had not at all adjusted to the complete lack of light, being able to see the road ahead because of Persephone’s headlights, but nothing else at all. My initial thought was to not wander off anywhere and I proceeded to attempt to unzip my fly with one hand and piss right there with the car door open, facing inside. That way, if someone came from behind, they might be able to tell I was urinating, but not be able to see too much else, and if someone came from the front, the car door would block them from seeing much of anything at all.

“No! Not there!” Perry yelled.

“I have to piss!”

“You’ll get it in the car.”

“No, I can aim on the ground. It’s pretty damn easy to aim your piss when you’re a dude.”

“No, it will splatter up. Go farther away from the car.”

“I can’t fucking see anything. If you didn’t notice it’s dark out. No full moon. It’s cloudy. No starlight!”

“Go away!” She screamed it.

“Fine, fuck you then,” I said.

Fine, fuck you then. I didn’t know that would be the last thing that I said to her. Maybe the situation called for it. Maybe it didn’t. Go away. That was the last thing she said to me. It makes you wonder about things.

I started walking away at a ninety-degree angle from the car. I felt what I guessed were tree branches, the apparent leaves slightly caressing my left arm and the top of my head as I continued to walk forward. Having gotten my zipper undone, I flipped my junk up over my boxers and began to pee. The pain turned to discomfort and eventually began to transform into a strong sense of relief. I continued walking forward, not at all afraid of wetting myself, as the built-up pressure made the stream quite strong. I should have just stopped when I hit the tree.

After the tree, I took a step, and then another. Another. Then...nothing.

My foot came down on...air, the absence of any solid material object, on nothing. Because of the speed and the unconscious certainty that I would step on solid ground I was propelled forward and down.

It was quite a shock to be falling briefly, then rolling.